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You are here: Home / Poetry / Waiting for my Turn
Waiting for my Turn

Poetry

Waiting for my Turn

Time turns into the way. I’ve to sit,
for blood pressure to stabilize.
Having learned doing nothing,
I navigate the nurse’s understanding,
later the doctor’s need for answers,
saying I drank three cups of coffee
before the taxi delivered my trust here.

Figures still before me, soundless
after the year of uncertainty. Seated,
I travel, with my eyes, across vulnerable
rows, ideas of hope chaired. We hold our
consent’s forms, signatures affixed to the
universal promise. We share
the better day meeting us halfway.

Even if we limp, even if in wheelchairs
we move without moving, we, touched,
touch without touching. We reclaim
birthrights to live and relive, restock
memories, taking turns together.
Childhoods shall be restored, on their
own terms, elders remaster golden years

that gather us all. Those who turn fields
fallow, those who harvest and turn over
blessings to community pantries, shall
revisit values of sweat and tears, the sun
recognizing our smiles, the Earth singing
footsteps back into chorus. Love jabbed
into my shoulder shall flow.

Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His poetry and fiction are forthcoming in The Cape Rock and Poetry Salzburg Review, and have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, including Chiron Review, Thin Air, The Lyric, The McNeese Review, and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree” and “Multiverse” (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), “50 Acrostic Poems,” (Cyberwit, India), “In the Donald’s Time” (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), and “Pan’s Saxophone” (Weasel Press, Texas).

Featured Artwork:

Smokehouse
Watercolor

Daoud Naouri, originally from Tangier, lives in Northern California. His work revolves around the frailty of humans and the beauty of nature.

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